High Desert Wildlife Drama

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A few days ago we saw our first snake of the season. Our buddy, Crotalus, advised that it was a Sonoran gopher snake and that it preys on rodents and is non venomous. Today, the same snake appeared out back. As it climbed up the embankment by our driveway, a curve-billed thrasher and its mate showed up to encourage the snake to go elsewhere. The bird in the photo pecked at the snake’s tail several times before the snake hurried off into some underbrush on the neighbor’s property. Click on the image to enlarge.

Beavertail Prickly Pear Flowers

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None of our beavertail cacti are ready to show flowers just yet, but this more mature cactus belonging to a distant neighbor has pink flowers in abundance with more on the way. I can hardly wait for our beavertails to start early flowering.

P.S. My hedgehog cacti will be showing pink flowers very soon.

Cabela at Rest

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It has been a little over a year and a half since we adopted Cabela. She is an active and lovable miniature pinscher. Between her and Beethoven (the other min-pin), they make us laugh every day.

Since she is a very active dog, it is unusual to see her so much at rest on the back of the love seat. To our relief, she almost always lets us sleep all night long when it’s bedtime. Click on her picture to enlarge.

BBQ Season Back

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Now that the weather is turned to (mostly) spring weather, the grill comes out of storage to active use. Today, we enjoyed pork baby back ribs with Verna’s killer potato salad and bake beans. Yummers! 🙂

Tomorrow, we’ll be grilling rib eye beef and salmon steaks for surf ‘n’ turf Sunday. Click on the image to enlarge.

Visit to the Dog Park

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We took Bear, Cabela and Bay Bay to the dog park today. Our dog park is a no-leash park and boy, do the dogs love it. They all (including Bear) gallop all around chasing each other and any other dogs in the park (today there were two other dogs – all friendly). In the image above, Bay Bay is heading back to us at full-gallop. Click on the image to enlarge.

Gold Strike

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“Gold Strike” is the name the grower of these beautiful yellow roses gave to this variety. I bought a dozen of these and some baby’s breath to decorate the great room in our home. I also got more daffodils for the office and guest bathroom. There sure are a lot of yellow flowers in the house this week. 🙂 Click on the image to enlarge.